I went looking for those "mana potion" energy drinks for showing to someone (whom I had just shown the Brawndo energy drink) and along side the Mana and Health potions was this delectable drinkable.

This is a far cooler option with the perk of being based off a somewhat better franchise. Fuck sparkly vampires.

Touch. I still like how Blood Energy Potions "have a similar nutritional makeup, same color, look, and consistency as real blood" though, made me chuckle.

I don't think that would work for vampires though

There was alot of talk about the problems of making HMHVV infected citizens in some places, and one of the biggest problems was that producing food for them was a huge issue. Clones were a viable but highly expensive solution to the problem, and so far no company had been able to make synthetic metahuman flesh that would satisfy the requirement. They didn't go into as much detail about blood though, but I'd imagine it is a similar problem.

Personally I figure it is just an easy solution to the homeless problem of any major city
^^^Read with sarcasm^^^

It wouldn't solve the Essence problem, but it might solve the Dietary Requirement (Blood) problem, which might not even be a problem since it doesn't specify which type of blood. They can be drinking pig or cow blood, so an artificial "blood substitute" doesn't bother me.

I suppose, but the blood problem always seems to be brought up with being almost as big a deal as the flesh. Perhaps it is more a flavor issue for the blood. Fake/pig blood tastes like fried crap with a light sprinkling of charred shoe and a side of boiled leather, while orc blood is like a pizza, and human blood is like a burger, and elf blood is like a chicken dinner and so on.

Not all of the infected require Essence Drain. I believe the bit Karoline was talking about was focused around Ghouls.

Here is the passage I'm talking about, RC p61 in the sidebar.



So it seems to indicate that only blood from a metahuman works because it requires the aura around it. I think the 'large influxes of mana' is talking about essence drain.

Well, the wendigo and ghoul Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh) is a bigger problem to work around, particularly since these are one of the subsets of the rules that get rewritten every edition and sometimes more than once per edition. (It's a lot easier to have a lot of ghouls running around in SR2 when they ate "the flesh of dead animals and sometimes humans" than needing kilos of dead metahuman flesh per week.)

Also, how much a Dietary Requirement requires is something that gets changed every so often. (I think a lot of the time these limitations are written in to be meaningful to PC's that are ghouls or vamps and they end up making the previously accepted fluff unworkable.)

You know, I've always wondered what specific differance it is that makes a vampire have to feed on metahuman essence and blood instead of animal essence and blood.... perhaps gene splicing some amount of human dna into rats, which already have an incredibly high rate of breeding and maturation would be a more viable solution the force-grown clones?

splicing in DNA is really hard and expensive. Look at the cost of geneware. I would guess it has to do with sentience, so perhaps giving a line of cows PuSHeD and some other stuff might tip them over the edge, but then you have new issues of sentient cows and how moral it might be to kill them. There are already issues rasied over the force-grown clones.

That quote I did earlier says 1% per week, but later on in the infected section it says 5% per week. I think 5% makes more sense for flesh, but less sense for blood, because blood is a much higher concentration of nutrients.

My thing about the 1% or the 5% is that if they're putting it in as a limitation on a PC, it doesn't matter, because a PC is just going to fold their dietary requirements into their lifestyle cost. (Very few GMs are going to make a ghoul PC hunt and kill each person they eat, most likely it will be handled "off-camera" or through an organlegging contact.) So the only time the percentage really applies is when we're trying to figure how much meat a group of ghouls requires, and using that percentage makes pretty much every figure for recorded ghoul populations listed in the fluff unworkable.

Well, 5% means that a pack of 20 ghouls requires a human every week, or maybe a really fat human or troll every other week. You figure with how many homeless and SINless there are out there, that isn't so hard to meet, especially when you consider the occasional grave robbing, body disposal, and various other ways that a ghoul can get some meat. 1% just seems like too little food to get by on for a week, because that could be as little a one pound of food a week. Most Americans eat that much a meal, much less a week.

Edit: You are very right about the fact that the exact % doesn't matter much for a PC. Even if it isn't handled off camera, it is still going to be hunting down a person every week or so, especially for a vampire because it is hard to store any blood for later. A ghoul type could just hunt down one person and keep them in the basement for a few months without too much worry really, and if it is only 1% could go for about a year without having to hunt down anyone new.

A problem arises when you have to account for in canon locations with hundreds of thousands of ghouls, like Asamando. You can do it (IMO anyway, but I've argued the point before), but it was a lot easier in previous editions.

What Vampire would drink Sythblood?
It'd be full of mediclorians . . .

Also, what does it say in the dietary requirements?
Just Blood or Metahuman Blood?
It doesn't really matter, it's still not blood.

There are places with that many ghouls? That's impressive, but you have to consider that cannibalism accounts for at least a certain portion of the diet, especially with the older ones dying off and such. But still, imagining getting the thousands and thousands of people you'd need to feed a place like that is kinda hard. Perhaps nearby countries send over their recently dead to help supplement that diet as well, though I can imagine that being a PR disaster.

"What do you mean grandpa's body is going to be served at the next Ghoultown town meeting?"

"Would you like to go in his place instead?"

From the Will:

>To the first company to create edible synthetic flesh for ghouls, I leave 2 million nuyen with which to develop a complete and diverse product line.

No word yet if anyone has succeeded yet; last news on this was SOTA2063 (Per Ancient Files).

Hey, what about clones? You've got all those speed-grown wimps that get harvested and ...? I mean, they're as close to synthetic metahuman as you can get.

Yeah, they talked about clones, but that is expensive. I don't know that the books ever say how much a clone might cost, but I'm guessing that ghouls would need a luxury grade food account to be able to afford clones.

If sentience is the issue then you just need to get really lawyerish in your definitions when designing the animal, honestly I doubt it would be as big an issue though since, well, people aren't going to identify with a cow like they do with what is arguably a human. As is however there is no evidence of that being the case as there are several species of ape that are sentient, the bonobo for example. Honestly when you look too closely though nothing about how vampires feed makes alot of sense as it is written, so when forced to deal with them I give my own reasoning that HMHVV is an awakened virus that can only enter a body when it has sufficient genetic information to adapt (drinking blood) to the new host. It works particularly well since I make all infected atleast limited sanquivores. The loss of blood accounts for temporary essence drain when combined with the "polluting" effects something like a vampire should have on the astral space around them and things they interact closely with. I know, not RAW, but it is my reasoning.

I haven't tried the Mana/Health Potions yet (I may in March 2010), and I haven't seen or heard of anyplace near me that would have the Blood Energy Drink Draco18s mentioned, but I have tried the TruBlood soda. It's a tangy orange (blood-orange) red soda that was actually quite good. A freind of mine and I were volunteering at the Prospect park Haunted Walk just this past Halloween and she brought one one bottle (costs $4 a bottle, SHEESH!) and we made it last the whole day. She kept the bottle as a souvenier, as I did a while back with my Holy Grail Ale bottle from a while back (another freind & fellow Python-ite repaid a kindness I had done him with it. I tasted the ale...I don't drink alcohol, but it was nice. I gave him the rest while I kept the bottle).

I would agree with the consensus that artificial/synthetic blood may provide a minimum dietary requirement to the vamp in SR drinking it, but for the much needed Essence, they would still seek out living beings for that necessity.

You watch Angel, especially the final season? Angel gets a job at Wolfram and Heart, and his secretary is a vampire. She makes him a cup of blood, and he ends up enjoying it, and she has a funny little bit about how she made it. Like "It's 70% pig, 25% cow, with some cat for flavor. And that extra little kick is ferret," or something. Hilarious.

As for the Essence: Volunteers, kind of like blood donors. There would probably be legal restrictions, such as "You can't donate Essence more than 5 times."

This reminds me of a old "Tails from the crypt" comic book.

That would imply that Essence can be legally quantified. I think the restriction would likely be, "vamps aren't allowed to kill people".

Yeah, but turning them into a vamp isn't killing

Besides, vamps can't tell any better than anyone else how much essence someone has. You could however have a mage hang out in the donation center and tell you if they would survive a feeding or not (4+ hits gives you an exact essence count, though that is quite a few hits). Or just have the people donating sign something that says 'if you die, too bad' but add in an option for if they want the vampire to bring them back as a vampire or just let them die. I mean a vampire could go for 5-6 months without draining essence without too much trouble if he tops out each time.

But there is that strong emotion requirement, and that might be hard to manage with an essence drive. Perhaps BTLs or something like that could help meet the requirement. Another problem is the addiction, perhaps have a 2-3 donation limit on a given SIN. It wouldn't be that hard for people to figure out that 6 vampire feedings -always- kills an uncybered person, and 5 kills them if they have a bit of cyber and 1-2 can be deadly to someone with alot of cyber.

And a mage can figure out exact essence, so while they may not have a 6 point scale like we do, they might have a 10 point scale and say "Yeah, you rank a 10." or "Gezz man, your not even a full 1 on a 10 point scale."

Also keep in mind that cyberzombies aren't real common to my knowledge, so there much be some sort of information about roughly how much cyber you can squeeze into a person before they go totally psycho. PCs with 'ware of course always magically know exactly how much their body can handle, and come within .25 or so of becoming a cyberzombie, and then know "I can't get anything new till I get something upgraded."

A vampire loses one point of essence each month. It is for this reason he must drain essence on a regular basis to survive.
Now here is an idea, for a house rule.
Say for a moment that the effects of essence drain were temporary? that it didn't permanently damage the victim of essence like cyberware or heavy addiction can do. Essence drain is very different then say implants or severe drug abuse so maybe its effects shouldn't be so permanent.

The victim would regain that drained essence at a rate of 0.25 a month. So it take him four months to regain even a single point of lost essence to the drain power.

Now obviously this recovery would apply only to the essence drained by the power.

A vampire loses one point of essence each month. It is for this reason he must drain essence on a regular basis to survive.
Now here is an idea, for a house rule.
Say for a moment that the effects of essence drain were temporary? that it didn't permanently damage the victim of essence like cyberware or heavy addiction can do. Essence drain is very different then say implants or severe drug abuse so maybe its effects shouldn't be so permanent.

The victim would regain that drained essence at a rate of 0.25 a month. So it take him four months to regain even a single point of lost essence to the drain power.

Now obviously this recovery would apply only to the essence drained by the power.

For better or worse that means a vampire could survive very easily if she has 4 people willing to be fed on 3 times a year. If she has a few more she can even use his vampire powers from time to time.

I think if this was the way things worked though, there would be no real reason to have vampires be as hated as they are. I mean blood would be no real problem to get from a blood bank, and essence you would just need to make a couple friends, or pay some homeless people 100 creds a month to feed off of since it doesn't really hurt them.

While I agree that essence drain seems like it should perhaps be a temperaory thing for the victim, it makes vampires far to... viably civil for the way the SR universe portrays them.

One of the vamps in my game was a con artist who would lure in terminally ill people with the promise of infecting them. (This was on the assumption there were terminal illnesses that Cure Disease wouldn't heal, which is how my group played it. YMMV.)

@Jack Kain: What I did, in the dark days before vampires had the Dietary Requirement (Blood) was to houserule it so that a vampire who was getting a regular supply of blood didn't lose the Essence every month, but I also changed it so that they had to spend Essence on certain powers (like Mist Form and Regen). So a vamp might go a whole year without losing any Essence, then get in a jam and go through six points in one combat.

The only real benefit to playing a vampire, at least if you're going to rationalize their cost, is that they can burn their Essence to boost their attributes to scary levels. Which, I imagine, would be pretty addictive in and of itself. And it certainly rationalizes why they'd need to feed regularly.

Good point but here is my solution to that. The victim of essence drain may be come addicted to the rush of being feed on. Well the vampire should suffer something similar shouldn't they? To help keep the monster in vampire when the victim can recover from the attack, here's what else we add. We make feeding like an addiction to. The vampire must make a test to cease feeding.
When a vampire wishes to to cease draining essence from the subject he must succeed on a Willpower (2) Test. Failure indicates he succumbs to the hunger and starts draining another point of essence. He is allowed to make another test after draining another point of essence.
*A glitch indicates an automatic failure, while a critical glitch imposes a -1 penalty on future tests for this instance.*

In addition should they encounter anyone seeking the rush, they must also make a willpower(2) test not to take them some place to initiate feeding. However on this test they gain a bonus on the die roll equal to their essence above five. So a vampire with ten essence gets five bonus dice to resent the opportunity of a willing victim.

So Bob the vampire drains a points of essence from a victim. He attempts a Willpower (2) Test to cease feeding. he fails and is forced to proceeds to draining another point of essence After draining his second point of essence can make another Willpower Test (2). Once again he fails and proceeds to drain third point of essence. Finally on the forth test he scores two hits and releases his victim. However by this point he has drained four points of essence.

If you are a sufficiently rich enough Vampire (or any infected for that matter), you could have a stable of volunteers. Rotate through them and drain 1 point each. Then just send them for the Essence restoration treatment. It's something like 0.1 Essence restored per week IIRC. Would just enough volunteers to support 1 point drained per month and the subsequent recovery time.

That'll keep the Infected alive and well indefinitely as long as it can be kept up. Doesn't let him get more use from his Essence though. Double or triple the volunteer pool and the Infected gets some flexibility.

Renfield.

It's 0.1 essence per month at 20k upkeep.

You'd need 10 volunteers and an additional 200k lifestyle cost a month.

I would fold that in with the luxury lifestyle (assuming the vamp had a luxury lifestyle and was maintaining it for his "stable" as well), but then in the words of Don Rickles, I'm a nice guy...

There is actually a mention (I think in RC) about the possibility of becoming addicted to using essence drain, but I'd imagine that you have to drain fairly often to have a chance of it happening (Kind of like focus addiction). If you're only draining monthly, then it shouldn't be a problem at all, but if you drain every night for a week, then try and go to monthly, you're likely to have some problems.

Also, a willpower (2) test is huge and going to be absurdly hard to resist for even the most willful vampire. It should be Willpower + Charisma (2) like the mentor spirit's compulsions, or perhaps even (3). But a strait up WIL (2) save is near impossible. I think it averages out to something like 33% chance of failure on a 6 willpower.

Speaking of Renfields, have Vampiric Pawns (PAoE) made it into SR4 yet?

I don't think so. They also haven't introduced temporary Essence Drain, which I have mixed feelings on.

Well I was just throwing the basic idea, of how to have the essence loss from the drain power be recoverable on your own. But keep the monster in the vampire and it being difficult to drain made the most sense. And it should be difficult to maintain the monster factor. And the hunger is supposed to be a big part of the vampire genre.

Maybe willpower+essence (3) a vampire who is well fed obviously should have an easier time resisting the hunger.

Or Will+CHA (or whatev) with a threshold based on Essence. ([4] for ESS 2, no test for ESS 11, and the other numbers shaking out somewhere in between.)

I like this the most. Wil + Cha (6-current essence) test to stop from feeding more than intended. Means that the starved vampire which in the book is described as being desperate for essence is going to drink till he is mostly sated, and the vampire who has all the essence they need and then some can just feed to fill up the tank as it were.

This makes me want to play an Infected with the Addiction (Essence Drain) quality.

The mentor spirit compulsion is pathetic, IMO. Our GM house ruled in a slight modification: every time you succeed you have a penalty to the next test. That way you fail eventually. That value of penalty then was applied as a bonus to his next spellcasting, IIRC (balancing out the penalty).

The player was already trying to find every excuse to make the roll (he wanted to have it fail eventually). What was funny is that he was still making the test down at having only four dice left (from like, 14), so he got off a nice spell afterwards (the bonus I think he was allowed to split between spellcasting and drain as he saw fit).

Well yeah, if I got a bonus to spellcasting every time I passed a composition test, I'd want to make as many of that test as possible too. I do agree that a wil+cha test isn't all that hard for a mage to make because wil is usually soft maxed and charisma is potentially as well for charisma based traditions, and not too low even otherwise because it limits bound spirits.

It's not a bonus for making the threshold, its a bonus for failing. You succumb to whatever base desire it is and you feel good afterwards.
In the case of the mentor spirit and the action being something the character doesn't really want to do, it could be justified as the spirit going, "Good, good..." and helping out a bit.

Ex.

12 dice, threshold 2. Passed. Next roll is at -1
11 dice, threshold 2. Passed. Next roll is at -2
10 dice, threshold 2. Passed. Next roll is at -3
9 dice, threshold 2. Passed. Next roll is at -4
8 dice, threshold 2. Passed. Next roll is at -5
7 dice, threshold 2. Passed. Next roll is at -6
6 dice, threshold 2, fails. Perform whatever action it is you were resisting doing.
Next spell cast gets 6 bonus dice split between casting and drain. Composition penalty reset to 0 (full 12 dice on the next test).

Ah, I see. That still seems like you would want to make rolls as often as possible so that you can fail and get that ultra spell (Or perhaps spirit) off.

Yeah, but he was doing it already because he wanted to fail, the GM just gave him an incentive to find a way to do something when he failed (eg. you failed: now what do you do?)

I forget what his actual compulsion was--something to do with illusions, IIRC--but he always had an idea of how he'd go about doing it before he made the roll.

Six extra dice doesn't even alter how much power you can pump into things (sure, throw all six dice at drain and go for a bit more force than you would normally), at least not as much as spending edge (of course, you could do both ). And because it was the next* spell, you couldn't always use it to maximum effectiveness. You couldn't count on it happening and you could end up using the bonus on something inconsequential.

*Obviously if you fail the roll and cast a spell as part of the compulsion, its not that spell that gets boosted.

Global Fame, SINner, Day Job? With Shadowruns on the side?

EDIT: Back to the main post though, I have one of the Bloodbag drinks I will be trying at work. A friend saw one and grabbed it for me.

If you're a really rich Essence-impaired individual, the answer - as always - is magic. An initiate with Invoking and access to Guardian Spirits can get the spirit to use Endowment to grant Sapience to a box of kittens. Now you can feed off of their Essence since they're Sapient. Various Asian recipes are available, or substitute with dog for variety.

Joking aside, I had a Norse tradition vampire magician that used this trick to keep his small group of vamps fed without endangering the non-Infected members of their little Norwegian commune.

Hmm, an interesting idea.... quite possibly workable... I'm not even going to explore the possibilities for vulgar jokes though.